DECEMBER, 2017—BULLETIN #131

It's not too late to give a meaningful gift to the readers and writers in your life.

We're at the mid-point of the final Very Short and Family Matters contests of 2017.Deadline for both: 1/2/18.

For Family Matters (1st place wins $2,500 and publication), we welcome new stories about families of all configurations. Most submissions run 1,000 to 5,000 words, but we are open to stories as long as 12,000 words.(Previous online-only publication is fine.)

The Very Short Fiction Award (1st place wins $2,000 and publication) is open to new stories from 300 – 3,000 words. (As always, previous online-only publication is fine.)

All stories are read and considered for publication in Glimmer Train Stories. Second- and 3rd- place winners for both categories win $500/$300, respectively, or, if accepted for publication, $700. Winners and finalists of both contests will be announced in the March 1 bulletin and contacted directly the previous week. We look forward to reading your work!

I'm not entirely sure why I write about family, but I do know that it hasn't stopped interesting me. You meet and leave other people at different stages of your evolution, whereas family is made up of people who are links in your life, who you know over the course of time and have your complete curriculum vitae in their heads.—Antonya Nelson, interviewed by Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais

Essays in this bulletin:

Sophie Chen Keller: My memories of childhood are probably my most vivid, and finding my younger self was a matter of focusing and deploying what I suppose is the writer's equivalent of method acting (more)

Andrew Porter: For me, the first draft of a story is about discovery. This is the period of time when I'm making important decisions about the tone of the story, the world of the story, and the characters who will occupy this world (more)

Will Boast: Oh, film editing, an acquaintance once said to Murch, that's where you cut out the bad bits. Murch fumes: "It's much more than that. Editing is structure, color, dynamics, manipulation of time ." But later he had to concede his friend's unwitting wisdom (more)

Siamak Vossoughi: When I first started to write, I went in another direction, because I wanted to see what else people were, besides their political beliefs. I wanted to find what people of different beliefs had in common. Simply put, it was this (more)

Feel free to forward this bulletin to your writer friends. As you know, the bulletin is free and meant to inform and to promote writers. (We never share your info.) People can sign up for bulletins themselves here. Missed a bulletin? They're archived here.

Best regards,

Discovering, publishing, and paying emerging writers since 1990.

One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train continues to actively champion emerging writers. The magazine is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, New Stories from the Midwest, the O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South, Best of the West, New Stories from the Southwest, Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.